New Motorsport.com Editor in Chief Steven Cole Smith talks about his new home.

About 15 years ago, I broke the story that Toyota – which had been dabbling in the NASCAR Goody’s Dash series – was preparing a full-court assault on the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, with an eye toward full participation in all three professional NASCAR classes.

Though I was working as the executive editor for Car and Driver magazine at the time, we really had no platform then to break racing news. But I was also writing for a very good motorsports web site, iRace.com, so I broke the story there: Toyota is ready to take a major step into NASCAR, starting with the trucks.

Breaking news is now handled electronically, online. Period.

Steven Cole Smith

It went nowhere. Even though the story was linked to Jayski.com, then and still the repository for NASCAR news, no one was paying attention to any news broken online.

As you can imagine, all it would take today to send news of that magnitude globally is a single tweet. Within an hour, it would be everywhere. I grew up in print journalism, and I’ve worked plenty in radio and television. But while all those platforms remain vital – for now, anyway – breaking news is now handled electronically, online. Period.

Though iRace.com and another motorsports web site I helped found, RacingOne.com, have long been erased from the ether, Motorsport.com has persevered and has grown massively in the past year or so. Motorsport.com has an enormous audience around the world, more than 1 million visits a month, one reason being that it covers more different series than any other site. The other reason is that it keeps adapting to new content distribution developments – its massive social media base is a good proof of that. What happened in the World Touring Car Championship opener in Marrakesh? Yeah, it’s there. But so are previews of this weekend’s NASCAR races at Richmond.

What's ahead

Now, the current management of Motorsport.com, including founder Eric Gilbert, want to take the site to the next level. I’ve been brought in as editor-in-chief, effective now. A few weeks ago Eric and I were talking about beefing up NASCAR coverage: I said if I could pick one member of the current NASCAR media out of the press room, it would be Lee Spencer. So we did. She’s now the Motorsport.com NASCAR editor. She joins an enormous, worldwide network of contributors, including Global Motorsport Media, our Formula One news service that is invariably at the forefront.

And there’s more coming. Here’s the plan: The information that brought you to Motorsport.com for all these years will still be there, including the best archive in the business – it includes 1.7 million photos alone – but there will be major additions.

More breaking news. More columns and opinions. More emphasis on products and manufacturers, and the connection between racing and passenger vehicles. More, well, everything, including stories you simply can’t find anywhere else.

Because even the most traditional among as has to admit that if you want the absolute latest information, you have to log on someplace. We are confident that once race fans log on to Motorsport.com one time, they’ll be back.